


L'enfer

by samskeyti



Category: Cambridge Spies
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 07:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samskeyti/pseuds/samskeyti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean-Paul Sartre had been a man who was difficult on the eye, Guy recalls. So difficult that one might have supposed he’d sprung from an Institute of Advanced Education in Birmingham or Hull, not the <em>École Normale</em>. However, he was correct about people —  about the general characteristics of other people — and Guy has lived accordingly for the last several years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	L'enfer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [matchsticks_p (matchsticks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/gifts).



> A post-Christmas gift, because it sprang immediately to mind that someone else has to have views on Sartre's vision of Hell.

Jean-Paul Sartre had been a man who was difficult on the eye, Guy recalls. So difficult that one might have supposed he’d sprung from an Institute of Advanced Education in Birmingham or Hull, not the _École Normale_. However, he was correct about people — about the general characteristics of other people — and Guy has lived accordingly for the last several years.

Guy’s in his apartment, shut in with the windows fogged over, the radiator groaning and nothing in any of the rooms to drink. The stairs are too much, being outside the front door, at the end of the hall and persuasive in their own way, with their cracked tiles and jittery lamplight that seems to rebuke him whenever he steps underneath it. The lift awaits repair. Sartre is still correct, absolutely and in general, even though one of those solid, clean-looking lads from the Department wouldn’t be unwelcome now. Guy would send him away at once, only to wait, like a virgin with a trembling fan for his return.

He’d like one of the lads with a bicycle, sweating and pedalling and rattling, the crate of bottles clinking like sleigh bells to herald his return and _honestly_ what’s there for a party member to _do_ on Christmas Eve? There’s a week to go until New Year and where has everybody gone? He rubs a port-hole into his window and peers out to confirm. The streets are bare save for a pair of women, not together but one on each side of the road, faces down as they approach, moving like ships in the cold.

He remembers a slim, young man with a yellow scarf. He’d spotted him a few days ago, waiting on the footpath with something in brown paper, tied up and slid under his arm, like a tedious document or a worthy book or — nobody gave presents, but supposing — it was the shape of a box, a slender one from Oxford Street, with space inside for a fold of tissue and a slippery cravat or a cashmere scarf, ice blue, like the sky behind Moscow’s roofs could be if the clouds ever lifted, the kind of blue that made him think of ice skates and white fur caps. Too clear for England, though the water sometimes, spreading out in the summer with the punts meandering through its colour, bending the sun on the surface to give it ripples and tiger stripes of gold. That blue had tried.

Guy gave Anthony a scarf, once. A near match for his eyes, but not exactly. Anthony, he would look on Hell with interest, though he’d dismiss Sartre’s as prosaic. He’d plump for Bosch’s Hell, crowded and gaudy as a cocktail party and he’d want to get in on the action. He could charm a demon, he probably could, given time and a private corner and a cocktail to give, to place in the demonic fingers and proceed to steal sips, touching for a second, two at each exchange. Or he’d spend an eternity trying to charm one, barely visibly trying, Guy can see the smoothness of his shirt front, the glint of cuff-links, the pale skin of his wrists. The trying’s submerged in his slight smile, his level bow tie. He’ll make a glass last for half the party, he’ll touch everyone else in the room exactly once — hand, cuff, shoulder — a spot low on Guy’s flank aches. He’s a swan and Guy’s a splashy duck and _hell_ he could murder a drink, now.

He has mislaid his gloves and his grey, abrasive scarf. They’re within his rooms, undoubtedly, but he has scarcely the inclination or the anxiety to look for them, though if he’s ever to breach the doorway, he must. He does have his coat — thick and black and soft, the cuffs a little rounder and the seams a little more obvious than they once were, but it’s still there, stoic on its hanger in his wardrobe. He lifts himself — with effort now, every bloody thing’s an effort here — and stands to steady himself.

He remembers the fit of the sleeves, the slide of his arms into its arms, the wordless hold of so much wool. The air in the shop clung — too warm and too much of it, though it didn’t seem to bother Anthony, who blinked and smiled and laid his palms on the lapels. Guy hadn’t buttoned the coat, but left it loose on either side of his chest. He sniffed at the air, wool and chalk, grey-coloured air, English air. The coat was definitely going to be enough, he thought from inside its bulk. The weight hung on him like a friendly tackle, a late in the evening lean, or something later, a desperate, consuming grip on somebody, from somebody, somebody gone in the morning, but not yet. Not yet.

And he would’ve said something (thank you, or you shouldn’t or — ) but there was a hand over his heart and another over the — opposite of heart, he supposed and Guy said nothing after all, can’t remember now what he should have said. Just that Anthony’s eyes were unusual and blue, a type he still doesn’t have a name for.


End file.
